Few AI deepfakes identified in European elections, says Microsoft president

By Supantha Mukherjee

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Microsoft did not see significant use of artificial intelligence during the European parliamentary elections to create disinformation campaigns, the company's president told Reuters in an interview.

Brad Smith was in Stockholm to announce Microsoft's plan to invest 33.7 billion Swedish crowns ($3.21 billion) to develop its cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure in Sweden over a two-year period.

“We need to recognize the risks that AI can create in the context of creating abusive content and one form of abusive content would be AI-generated deep infringement,” Smith said.

AI and AI-generated fakes, or deepfakes, are increasingly used in elections elsewhere in the world, including India, the United States, Pakistan and Indonesia.

In India, deepfake videos have gone viral, showing two of Bollywood's star actors criticizing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and asking people to vote for the opposition Congress party in the country's general election.

Last month, the European Union's counter-disinformation team debunked a Russian-language video on Google-owned YouTube that claimed citizens were fleeing the dictatorship of EU member Poland and seeking refuge in Belarus, a close ally of Moscow.

European Parliament elections take place June 6-9, as the bloc's historic rules on AI come into force this month, setting a potential global benchmark for a technology used in business and everyday life .

Microsoft has trained European Parliament candidates to monitor the situation, Smith said.

“We haven't seen an aggressive effort to try to exploit this election,” Smith said. “They’re not finished yet, so we shouldn’t claim victory.”

“We just see the Russians focusing on the Olympics,” Smith said, adding that Microsoft would release a report on the subject later Monday.

The International Olympic Committee banned the Russian Olympic Committee in October for recognizing the regional Olympic councils of the Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine – Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm, editing by Louise Heavens)